Midnight Sun
by MochaCocaFan
Summary: A very different, less disturbing Midnight, because frankly that was the creepiest episode ever.


Loud.

Too loud, too many voices, too much, too many. It hurt. The body flinched and curled up in the fetal position, both hands clasped tightly over its ears, eyes squeezed shut. Of course, the Creature didn't know what ears or eyes or positions were, but it did know pain. Mostly.

The Creature whimpered as a reflex. There was too much stimulation, too much everything. The Others had told her it would hurt, that's why they would be there to help, that's why they stayed and died when the sun became poison. She was young, young, too young almost. Of course, 'she' was not exactly correct, as the form of life that she was didn't have anything resembling gender or sex, but she had essentially chosen the body of a barely-out-of-her-teens girl.

When the Others had left, gone, died, she had been all alone and had stayed, because, of course, you couldn't move until you had a Body, and she hadn't until now. And she wanted it to be done, over, she wanted it so badly to stop hurting. She'd been so happy, excited, nervous even, when the Thing had come, and that had manifested as a banging on the ship.

She'd then reigned it in, toned it down to mere tapping, gentle as ever. Then Something inside had tapped too, and she'd tapped back, copied, imitated. And then the tapping had changed again, and she'd changed it again. She wanted it, the communication, the response, the life! She had missed it badly, ever so badly.

She'd gone for this body inside, this one, because this mind was so easy to get into, and she could see that this body was fine, and she wanted in, she wanted a Body now, badly. She didn't know that she'd knocked out the electricity and that the banging and tapping had scared the people inside witless. And now it hurt, ever so bad, and she wanted it to stop.

Now.

_WE MUST NOT LOOK AT GOBLIN MEN, WE MUST NOT BUY THEIR FRUITS; WHO KNOWS WHAT SOIL THEY FED THEIR HUNGRY THIRSTY ROOTS_

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* * *

_

The Doctor frowned, looking back at Skye.

She hadn't moved at all, except to curl up and squeeze her eyes shut and cover up her ears. The hostess lady had managed to get contact back with the mechanic and driver- Claude and Joe- and they were fine. Everybody seemed fine, just shaken up and afraid.

The electricity and engine came back on, and Skye hadn't react. Worry coursed through the Doctor- she might've hit her head, gotten knocked out, fainted. He walked over and crouched next to her. He heard faint whimpering and saw tear tracks down the girl's face. She was just barely eighteen or nineteen, and she'd told him she'd just started traveling on her own and had been too nervous to even eat breakfast, and now _this_ had happened. He got the medical kit, got the girl's name, and knelt down next to her.

"Skye, can you hear me? Skye, are you alright? Can you move? Just look at me. Turn to face me."

No response.

The Doctor shifted and then lowered his face near hers, almost touching. He very carefully tilted her head up, feeling her forehead as he did. It was a little chilly, but not dangerous.

"Skye, look at me, okay? It's all right. I just want you to look at me."

Her dark eyes were tightly shut. Her face was twisted with agony. Compassion filled him like hot air from a balloon.

"Where does it hurt?"

No response, aside from whimpering more.

The Doctor very gently picked up the emergency water bottle. He knew that Skye hadn't drunk the juice pack, and was probably very thirsty. He placed it in her hands and frowned when they hung limply, the closed bottle falling out when he lets go. Can she move? Can she hear him? Is she conscious?

Jethro made the suggestion that whatever was knocking outside was now, in fact, inside. The Doctor ignored Val Kane and took a closer look at Skye. She looked like...a person suffering from sensory overload, a person in pain. Turning her face away, covering up her ears, hunching down, closing her eyes...fairly common reactions to overstimulation.

He unscrewed the water bottle, used the tip to gently open her lips, and tilted it very gently. Skye- or whatever was in Skye- started to swallow, but that meant very little. Swallowing liquid or chewed-up food was a reflex that did not require full awareness.

_WE MUST NOT LOOK AT GOBLIN MEN, WE MUST NOT BUY THEIR FRUITS; WHO KNOWS WHAT SOIL THEY FED THEIR HUNGRY THIRSTY ROOTS_

* * *

The Creature was better, slightly, in less pain. The slippery Thing gone down into her had lessened a dry, scorching itchy pain in her throat. Of course, if you'd asked her, she wouldn't have the faintest as to what sort of pain the thirst had been, or what a throat was, or what, exactly, had gone down it. She did know that one of the warm, pulsing Things had helped her, had at first put the Thing with the slippery Thing in some part of her new Body. She hadn't struggled when one of the Things had turned her head, hadn't screamed in agony when the Thing That Touched Her make yet more noise, because The Thing That Had Touched Her had made the noise softer, quieter, not enough to make her scream. She hadn't moved, if only because she didn't have a clue how.

This was what the Others were supposed to do, supposed to help with- moving and the pain and the bombardment. She had been there, presence comforting, to Few who had gotten into their own Bodies, and she had heard- in the most alien, telepathic bastardization of the verb 'heard'- the oft-repeated advice: Let The Body do what it will. If it began moving without you telling it to, let it. Learn from it.

And, of course, don't panic.

The Thing That Touched Her had seemed to understand that she needed less noise, quieter noise, softer noise. It had seemed to understand that she couldn't move the spindly Parts that stuck out to grasp or hold the Thing, much less lift the heavier Part to raise it to the opening. It had nevertheless poured the slippery Thing down the Part That Connected, and had ceased making more noise.

Now the noise had begun again, soft and calm but with a strange quality. Still, the Creature wanted the lack of noise so close once more, and involuntarily whimpered in pain. The noise from the Thing That Touched Her stopped. She took note- making that Quiet Odd Noise=No More Noise-Pain From The Thing That Touched Her.

Maybe...it was an Other? She hesitated. No- they had all been obliterated, annihilated, gone in a second. She had felt the death, felt the split-second shock of it, the way the poison sun had suddenly gone worse and had vaporized all her kind, everything that could possibly help her, or just be there to make the darkness comforting again. Still, she wanted it desperately to be true, but no. That hypothesis wouldn't be wrong if she could reach out and contact the Thing That Touched Her.

She reached out, tentatively, longing for the familiar warm humming sensation of connection, and felt nothing at all. She pushed harder, farther, and still felt nothing. A choking sob came from her throat, more tears streaming down her cheeks in response to the rippling waves of agony that tore through her, worse than this awful pain from the Body. No more Others, nothing, nothing, nothing, , nothing but the dark and the cold and the emptiness of the glittering poison sunny landscape and the wait of eternity, nothing to ever be good or right again, nothing to help her through this.

Aware, quite suddenly, of the realization that she was doing precisely what the Others had always gently advised the Few in their new Bodies not to do: panicking. Think. Think. What do you need? Something like an Other. What's the closest to an Other? The Thing That Touched Her was acting rather like one. Okay, so The Thing That Touched Her. That Thing, the Important One, look for It. But not like before. Different. Don't search, just...feel. Listen.

She listened, going quiet, and began to Hear the humming songs of the Important One, and others. The other songs weren't important, really, so she ignored them and focused on the Important One. She could feel it almost, like a vibration, a sort of auditory translation of the perpetual sparkle of the crystal wastelands. It was many melodies twisted and intertwined and odd, and not something she could just reach out and touch. Almost like and Other. The harder she chased it, trying to make contact, the quieter the song grew. So she relaxed, waiting, listening harder and harder to the Almost-Other as the pain from her Body began to fade, recede.

_WE MUST NOT LOOK AT GOBLIN MEN, WE MUST NOT BUY THEIR FRUITS; WHO KNOWS WHAT SOIL THEY FED THEIR HUNGRY THIRSTY ROOTS_

* * *

The Doctor had started to talk to Skye- and, if he was being honest, to himself- after the bottle of water was drunk. The other passengers were calming down, the hysteria fading away.

"What is it? What are you? A life, a form of life I've never seen...No, I don't know what it is...I'm glad you have a absolute definition for life and the conditions that allow it, but the universe and reality happen to have their own ideas...What are you, hmm? Are you in pain? Is Skye still in there? Why the knocking? Why now, why not before?"

When he heard another pained whimper, he stopped talking immediately and got the other passengers to get back to the seats. Val and Biff were grumbling to themselves far away, Dee Dee and Professor Hobbes were rows and rows away, staring in fascinaton and muttering in indignant sho,ck respectively. The Hostess was talking with Driver Joe and Mechanic Claude, and Jethro was nearby, utterly enthralled.

The Doctor was surprised when Skye bursts into choked sobs that make tears stream hotly down her face, but more surprised when it abruptly stopped. Her body relaxes more, if that's possible. She goes so limp and lifeless that he worries for a second if she's dead, but no, her stomach and chest rise again with breathing, but ever so slow. He takes her pulse, noting that it's very slow and relaxed.

He tells Jethro to get some tissues, for the tears (and snot), and then wipes her face and nose clean. He gets the Hostess to dim the lights where they are, and explains to the other passengers that he thinks the thing- whatever it is- is suffering from sensory overload. Her pulse eventually picks up, and then her eyes open.

There is no difference in color at all, but a very startling difference in terms of expression. The dark things look utterly confused, knowledge-less, helpless, almost afraid. It makes empathy bloom inside his chest, and he decides not to talk- he wants a response, a communication, a conversation of sorts, and speech seemed to make the thing just shut down in pain.

The Doctor's brilliant mind buzzes and whirls senselessly. Oddly, he decides to do a little experiment. He holds both her long-fingered hands in his and raises them to eye level. He turns over her left palm and taps once, twice, thrice, four times.

And waits for a response.

_WE MUST NOT LOOK AT GOBLIN MEN, WE MUST NOT BUY THEIR FRUITS; WHO KNOWS WHAT SOIL THEY FED THEIR HUNGRY THIRSTY ROOTS_

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* * *

_

The Almost-Other, as she has firmly categorized him- alone in that category, but nevertheless in that new category- is odd. What is It trying to do? Teach her? Yes, teach. That's why It makes no more noise, not even soft, quiet noise that she doesn't think she'd really mind all that much right now that her mind's adjusted and the sense of too-much is gone. It is learning from her, as she is learning from It.

Now that Seeing does not hurt (she decided to experiment once the pain had faded, and had been able to stand opening her eyes), she is surprised that More Darkness (a concept, mercifully, that she could understand) equals Less Pain. The Almost-Other lifts two Parts by the odd connector to the spindlythin Parts and rotates on to reveal a slightly different-looking bit of the part.

Her Parts of her Body are odd, and she almost jumps when the Almost-Other taps four times on the Part, sending shocks shooting up to fizz and crackle up at the top of her spine. _Like the knocking!_ It is exactly like that. She stares at Its face- not something she understood- and then copies, just like she did before.

The Almost-Other makes some sort of joyful exclamation, a noise that doesn't cause her pain, mere surprise. It's smooth, somehow, and she mimics that too, after the Almost-Other looks finishes the sound. She likes the feel of it on her tongue- not something she has a name for, yet- and the way her lips and mouth move to make it. She feels a surge of delight like the inarticulated pumping in her unnamed chest.

She _likes_ this learning.

_WE MUST NOT LOOK AT GOBLIN MEN, WE MUST NOT BUY THEIR FRUITS; WHO KNOWS WHAT SOIL THEY FED THEIR HUNGRY THIRSTY ROOTS_

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* * *

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"Molto bene!"

It had been almost a mistake, really, until she copied it perfectly, with the same inflection and accent.

"Molto bene!"

She had tapped back, copied back. The Doctor had had the despairing thought that maybe it wasn't the strange thing from outside inside Skye now, but midway through that thought, the thing's eyes flashed from blank puzzlement to complete epiphany, and she had turned over _his_ arm and tapped once, twice, thrice, four times on _his_ palm. Complete copying of his actions. The Doctor had wanted to jump for joy, and the Italian phrase had slipped out without his notice.

He had nearly slapped himself- hadn't they already established that speech just made the thing withdraw and hurt?- but then said it again when she had copied that phrase too instead of curling up and whimpering. And then he'd promptly wanted to smack himself in the face _again_ when he took a moment to think and realized that him speaking probably only hurt because of extreme overstimulation, and now that whatever it was wasn't overstimulated, it would just be curious.

Curious! He certainly was. The other passengers had turned to look. He grinned and started talking, the smile growing bigger now that she was copying the talking too, a creeping look of happiness coming up.

"Brilliant, isn't it! Just brilliant! Of course!"

"Brilliant, isn't it! Just brilliant!" She begun just after the first sentence had ended.

"Learning, copying, imitating, mimicking, duplicating, mirroring, echoing! A new life-form, totally new, and it's learning."

"Of course! Learning, copying, imitating, mimicking, duplicating, mirroring, echoing! A new life-form, totally new,-"

"Look!"

"-and it's learning. Look!"

He turned to face the other passengers, grinning at even the Hostess. "Look, it's not dangerous, it hasn't hurt anybody! All it's doing is copying me!"

"Look, it's not dangerous, it hasn't hurt anybody!" Again, it started just after the first sentence after the pause had ended.

"Nothing else."

"All it's doing is copying me! Nothing else."

"What about Ms Silvestry? It might've killed her." Professor Hobbes pointed out.

"It might not have. She might still be in there, or be fused or meshed."

"It might not have. She might still be there-" Why the same pattern of waiting before repeating?

"Or maybe it did and didn't mean to at all."

"-or be fused or meshed. Or maybe it did and didn't mean to at all."

It was a reasonable possibility. He would have to investigate.

The Hostess cut in. "We are going to be arriving at our destination, the Winter Witch Canyon, in ten minutes. If you look out the windows, you can see the famed waterfalls of sapphires. They are not true sapphires, in terms of composition," a nod to Professor Hobbes, "But they are quite lovely, nonetheless. Please enjoy the view."

The Doctor turned his head to look at the windows. She copied.

"Here, Jethro. Help me get her near the windows."

"Here, Jethro. Help me get her near the windows."

Jethro walked over and began to help push-pull her into a sitting position, and then into a standing one. The Doctor managed to keep her from immediately crashing spectacularly onto the floor, and then into a window seat. He took the seat opposite her.

Her eyes were wide, staring at him.

_WE MUST NOT LOOK AT GOBLIN MEN, WE MUST NOT BUY THEIR FRUITS; WHO KNOWS WHAT SOIL THEY FED THEIR HUNGRY THIRSTY ROOTS_

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* * *

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The Almost-Other had repeated back the joyful sound and gone on to make more and more. She ignored the other Thing that had made the noise too. None of them had felt like anything as bewitching or seductive or enchanting, and frankly, none had helped her at all. They did not matter.

Copying the Almost-Other had brought a rush of pleasure, and she intended to keep doing it. She liked making the noises, she liked the sound and feel of them, the vibration of the Connection Part and the movements, and the short and long and strong and weak and loud and soft and forceful and gentle sounds. It was unlike anything ever before. Communication with the Others never involved senses of any sort except a strangely untranslated form of telepathy, and since the thoughts they shared were entirely language-less, this was all entirely new. But it was easy really, fun, and she wanted to keep going.

When the Almost-Other and another Thing had pushed a part of her Body up, she had been startled to realize that she could bend in half one way. With help and no struggling whatsoever, she managed to end up in a seat next to a thing through which there was more to look at.

She looked out and shivered violently at the bejeweled graveyard, the corpses of the Others dissolved into diamond dust. Crystal shavings whispered of silent murder, the shadows flickering out too fast for anyone to know what was happening.

The death was suffocating. Experimentally, she flexed the spindleparts and the thicker extensions, pushing down on the Thing she was on, and pushing over, away from the beautiful nightmare. She did not want to be so close to the place that murmured of the empty hollow in her chest where not even cobwebs dared to come.

_WE MUST NOT LOOK AT GOBLIN MEN, WE MUST NOT BUY THEIR FRUITS; WHO KNOWS WHAT SOIL THEY FED THEIR HUNGRY THIRSTY ROOTS_

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* * *

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The Doctor blinked as She stared out the window, shuddered, and moved over. Why did She do that? Was that...fear? Bad memories? Did She even have memories? Was She even female? Did the forms that She have have sentience, consciousness, gender?

Well, yes on sentience. That was clear. Language, though, or bodies of some sort- no. Gender was trickier. He'd figure it out when She could properly communicate with him. Now, though, that was fascinating. If it was a reaction to intense dislike of the landscape, he wanted to know why.

He wanted to figure everything out. The Doctor grinned. He had just found another companion.


End file.
